Christmas in Eternity Springs Read Free

thought as she locked the door behind him and gazed around her shop. Her Christmas shop. She would admit that her spur-of-the-moment decision to open a Christmas shop in the middle of Nowhere, Colorado, based on the recommendation of a twinkling-eyed stranger riding a motorcycle could make a decent case study for a psych professor.
    However, the town suited her. She was making friends. She was operating her business in the black. Sure, she had issues, but she was working on them, wasn’t she? She didn’t want to hate Christmas. She was tackling one of her biggest demons. And she got points for creating an Angel Room in Forever Christmas, didn’t she?
    Her gaze drifted toward said Angel Room, where the tree central to the entire display stood with a naked top. A flurry of sales in the past two days had depleted her inventory and she’d been forced to use her sample to fill Brick’s request. “Bonus points if you go ahead and put a different angel on top of that tree tonight,” she challenged herself.
    If she faced the Angel Room and that envelope in the same day, she’d deserve more than just bonus points. She’d deserve ice cream. Two scoops.
    Because Claire and Christmas weren’t exactly on the best terms. She associated Bad Things with Christmas. Things like illness and death, and more recently, betrayal. She couldn’t help it. All of it had happened. Before the Lying Lizard Louse, the holiday season had depressed her. Made her sad. Made her heart ache. Since him, she’d connected Christmas with the molten anger boiling inside her.
    And dang it, she was going to change that. Despite the larcenous liar, she was going to learn to love Christmas again. Love the scents and the tastes and the sounds and the colors of Christmas. Love the snowmen and ornaments and peppermints. Love the angels.
    The angels. She’d love every freaking sparkling feathery angel. Even if it killed her.
    Well, except for Starlina. That was asking too much. Claire still had her pride.
    She blew out a breath, mentally reviewed her inventory, and decided on a new angel to crown the centerpiece tree. She carried her ladder from the supply room and positioned it. As she removed a simple white porcelain topper from the box, her gaze stole toward an angel with a tattered dress and a broken wing sitting mostly hidden behind a trio of bright, shiny, beautiful angels. Gardenia.
    Emotion roiled within her. With her gaze focused on the bedraggled angel, she thought of the envelope upstairs. Almost against her will, she glanced down at the empty third finger of her left hand. The tears that stung the back of her eyes annoyed her, so she stomped her feet just a little bit as she climbed the ladder.
    Claire’s petite form came with short arms. Ordinarily when she trimmed a tall tree, she used an extension tool to help her place decorations. She’d already climbed the ladder when she realized she’d forgotten it. Impatient with herself on many levels, she wanted the task over and done with. She climbed another rung of the ladder, extended her arm, and reached for the tip of the tree with the angel topper. And reached. Leaned a little farther. Stretched …
    â€œOw!” Pain sliced through her shoulder as she slid the angel on the treetop. She’d tweaked an old rotator-cuff injury. “This day just keeps getting better and better.”
    She couldn’t even dull the ache with nice glass of cabernet since she still had two days of antibiotics to take after having an emergency root canal on Monday. As she descended the ladder, she grumbled aloud, “A great day in a spectacular week.”
    Root canal. Flat tire. Shattered phone screen.
    Contact from the past she’d run from but could never escape.
    Claire exhaled a heavy sigh, put away her ladder, then turned off the shop lights and climbed the stairs to her apartment. Unfortunately, the envelope hadn’t slithered off her